The Arena
by Winkaku
Summary: Death wears steel toed boots and a blue shirt.


A/N: this is a ficlet based on the first fight scenes from J-3 in the battle arena.

The story is a companion piece to a comic I made and each "chapter" is a representative of a different panel.

Hopefully this will cut down the confusion with the jumping style my fics tend to take and I'm also tampering with point of view with each panel in order to make things a little more interesting.

I was once hospitalized because my tonsillectomy operation hadn't sealed up right and I was hacking black scabby and crimson red blood for nearly an hour.

This story has some of its visual inspiration in that experience and I can say for certain that you won't really see the sick unless you've suffered such a malady yourself.

WARNING- very graphic.

/

Arena trials

/

"Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints…" -unknown

The first thing you'd notice is the blood, the sheer disgusting amount of sick glistening deep crimson red like thick congealing wine.

The second thing you'll see is the hideous crackling of burning black electricity, a blood wet maw open wide in a soundless laugh, the terrifying screams cut so short and the bodies cut down like broken dolls.

The third thing you'll see is the grey, almost mottled white flesh like the skin of a weak old corpse bleached in the desert wasteland, blood on steel on black on blood on almost pearl white gleaming fangs and flesh on a black throat spilling onto red lips curled back in tumultuous glee.

The last thing you might notice before you die is the false nature of its happiness and glee, this creature knows only pain and death, being an emissary of hell, perhaps even hell itself.

It knows no real pleasure but its fake smile fools you into thinking it feels more than hell.

I wish I were blind.

And deaf.

Or maybe just dead… because that thing, that blood saturated devil of a pale white skinned, black clawed… thing… is coming this way.

It's a clawed and torn thing of nothing but endless vile pits of ferocity that grew from its own dead remains and scars; backstabbed, and devoured itself and I can see that in it as it walks toward the platforms.

Slow and steady footfalls schluping in the blood bath that was once the arena, licking its nails of my allies' blood, lapping it up like the sweetest treat and "enjoying" every bit of it and every look around.

Phantasmagoria:

1. A series or group of strange or bizarre images seen as if in a dream

2. A scene or view that encompasses many things and changes constantly

I guess you could call it that… it's some kind of nightmare…I really wish I was dreaming…but I know I'm not, even though it all seems so unreal.

I see hell in its eyes, and heaven in the sweet release of a black claw, as if it were to hold infinity in its hand, and an eternity of pain in an hour's short breath.

It was man's fear that first made gods in the world, if that is the case, then this creature created the vision of god in the eyes of man; maybe it is a god...

Hate, pure unadulterated hate.

Anger so bad you feel it as it burns you apart from the inside out, it scorches and screams and you want it to go away so that you don't feel the pain anymore, but you hold onto it so tight you bleed black because your afraid if it's gone you'll have no life left in you and you'll just cease to exist.

You keep the pain so you can't think, because thinking of the pain doesn't let you really think, because if you really thought about it; about everything, all the questions you don't want to ask yourself and all the screams, then you'd realize you're already dead and then you're just plain scared of the answers you already know and your just drowning in the eco.

I can feel it, I can feel hate and pain and anger and it's tearing me apart from the inside out and I feel as if it holds my answers and for the first time since I saw my brother eaten alive by metalheads, I am afraid.

No matter how many times you paint the house, it never changes the colors of the memories hidden in its walls.

I can see them in its black eyes…

Even in death I will never forget that gods smile.

I think therefore I am.

I hate therefore I exist!

/

The nameless warrior fell to the ground like a rag doll with a wet plop, a puppet whose strings curtailed abruptly back beneath a red-hot blade.

Blood poured forth anew as the almost silent rasp of a laugh seemed to echo and throb through the halls and the very lava of the arena itself lumbered back and bubbled in quiet gurgling disgust.

In a swift lunging razor fanged bite so quickly after the last one fell it was all a white blur, the red spattered devil gorged its gaping maw upon the soft yet calloused flesh of another man's neck.

There was a long gratuitous meaty snap of bones and just like that the colossus of a man lay limp and ripped open in its spit slick jaws.

In that same single motion that snapped the warriors neck the demon swung the body in its jaws even harder and, with the accompaniment of black claws and ivory canines to help with its new toy, the play-things lower half went sailing in the opposite direction of its torso; head and neck still held firm in the devils scissor clamp fangs.

Oh dear…it broke its toy, time to find a new one.

Psychotic onyx black eyes showed neither mind nor sanity nor pity, as black as death and as eco and as night.

The demons low laugh hissed through the eco thick stench and air, curling almost lovingly into the lazy electrical energy. Bolts and arcs of crackling spitting black and blood shot wide as the upper body of the man held in its jaws slopped onto the floor with a thick thud. The torso sizzled on the lava heated plates, long ribbons of bloody saliva still reaching from the demons lips to claw into the garish wound at the neck, oozing and pooling into the gashes in the meat, all teeth marks and splintered bone and jagged edges.

Electric black spewed forth with a malicious happiness, a smooth slithering of gleeful reaching grasping hands, hissing and singing with each new bolt and tendril.

A symphony of hateful, painful, glee; false in its purr yet undeniably and terribly true.

Midnight black claws like daggers fresh and clean from the sheath drenched in a red downpour, swift and sure and deadly in every method and motion.

The continuous tap-tap and wave of liquid a maddening sharp wet tick and loud liquid slap.

The remains of what could have been a man lay bent over itself, on its open side, body torn and gutted, perhaps eaten, a mere shadow in the fray.

Metal plates gauged apart, one eye missing and weapons and steel armor curtailed to bent stumps and shards; the eviscerated corpse looked almost as though its once alive owner had fallen stupidly onto an eco trip-mine, like the ones they used to persuade the marauders that roamed their deserts.

Whether this one died quickly or slowly it is impossible to tell and one would pray it was quick.

The creature was a blur of red and black and white, of electricity, power and eco as it tore through one fighter after another; armor gave way like warm wax, flesh rent into such pretty designs; the arena a canvas for its insatiable pleasure.

What an artist this hell-spawn creature is…

The lava rose inch by near hesitant inch, slowly claiming the torn confetti of scrap and corpse with a sick burning hiss as it crept forward and cleared the canvas.

The death of the final warrior was a sight to behold and a nightmare that no mother could chase away.

This creature… this thing, it held no remorse nor regret as it killed in quick pseudo happiness, tendrils of black scorching hell into whatever they touched, the caress of black.

Claws sunk deep and flesh took flight, it seemed as if the man had spontaneously combusted into the wanting hands of the hell-spawn, but you knew better than to entertain such flights of fancy.

The devil sent the still screaming man through the meat-grinder that was its monstrous clawed glee and the blood gargled screams died with him, cut too short too quickly.

The final toy beyond use, stripped into meaty wet ribbons and shards, the blood-bathed devil lifted the remains of the former humans cleanly severed upper head high.

Red clotting rivers gushed out as it poured the delicious copper draught into its gapping, slathered, oil black and spit slick maw relishing every bit of the sweet, sticky ambrosia, spider-web strands of thick toxic saliva hanging from pointed wet teeth and lips.

Tongue outstretched to catch the liquid treat and lips curled into an insanely pleasured smile as the blood ebbed with its hematomaniac orgasm.

With the easiest of gestures the demon crushed the last pieces of the fragmented fleshed skull in a sickening wet imploding crack and purred a deep rumbling growl of lustful satisfaction and waking excitation.

Power lulling about, slithering like gleeful hungry serpents in love and reverence to the demons body as the lava rose to meet the creatures feet and the rubber soles of its boots sizzled like sharp stifled cackles.

Casually it walked atop the liquid fire and molten rock untouched, black eco seeping out like a rapid infection, blotting out the glowing red beneath its feet with black sepsis,

Melted rubber, blood, eco and death itself swirled together in sick dancing revelry, the purple black of darkness kissing the stagnating surface beneath with the melted wet schlup of liquidating rubber and burning blood, like walking in deep mud.

As if afraid, the lava seemed to slink away, the canvas clearing of paint once again.

The laughing in the dark

/

"Those who watch their backs die from the front" – unknown

/

"Something you're not telling us? Animal man!"

The transformation itself was something out of nightmares; that Damas would agree to any day.

He himself was not fond of the war torn initiation that all newcomers were forced into, he did not like meaningless deaths, however the purpose of the arena was a profound one and it was an irreplaceable necessity to their warrior society.

Its steel gartered and lava drenched blackened riddles of paths and obstacles weeded out the weak and untalented.

It was a sad reality but those who could not survive in the arena would be a burden to them and they could not afford to support the weak in such a desperate rock and desert city.

This man was no weakling.

From the moment Damas had first laid eyes on him upon his recovery and the rat upon his shoulder, he had known that with only little doubt; the doubt had left him.

Those who can support the weak were indeed strong…this man was stronger than his entire city; this man could uphold the weak and Damas had reluctantly found admiration in that.

This creature…this Jak… who, and more importantly what, is he?

Throughout his many years as a survivor of Haven, the unforgiving desert, the ravenous hunger of the metal heads and even the creation of Spargus itself he had never bared witness to such an…extravagant slaughter.

Damas had watched atop his throne as pale peach flesh never burned by desert sun turned to ash white as if a fire had eaten away the color from within, like paper lit aflame from beneath.

He sat and watched as the man clutched his head and tore apart his own body in his pain with sharpening claws and as fangs grew out from a painful angry roaring mouth.

He stood shocked as human nails elongated into black blades and eco crackled and hissed and crawled like a mad lover, as blond bleached shock white and grew out into a thick spiny mane and muscle bulged and grew, tearing through the fabric of his clothes.

Black horns came out in a gut wrenching crack as the mans skeleton reformed and bent and hardened, as eyes turned midnight and blackness bolted about in an electric storm, a sensation of cold death crawling beneath the skin.

The evil creature that stood in place of the agonized man with such a disturbing speed was no mere devil by far.

Few things ever terrified Damas and even fewer happenings had made him so ill, he had never been so abhorred since the day that Praxis had ordered his child stolen and his wife murdered; it was as if the horrid events were happening all over again right before his very, helpless deep blue eyes.

The demon was a pale ashen white and stood a near seven to eight feet high, its power-bloated muscle bartered no silly fancies of weakness or sloth and it's eyes were an insane pitch black that devoured the light yet gleamed like polar stars.

Old clothes stretched and the creatures sparingly little armor groaned under the strain, struggling to adapt to its "new" host; the man's clothes must have been specially designed to withstand the transformation, no ordinary fiber could hold up to such disgusting abuse.

That was all that Damas could barely make out before the killing began.

It was a slaughter, a massacre, a parade of gleeful demonic excitement and a spectacle of sick.

It was as if the devil had been locked away so long that it felt as if it had needed to make up for lost time and it was as enthusiastic about its work as a loving new mother and her ecstatic husband.

Quickly, the swells of warriors that Damas had set to fight the man that once stood there fell like dominoes, one after another, after another, after another and with no signs of slowing down, painting the whole arena in dark congealing red and scab black.

The acrid stench of eco burnt at his nostrils, stung his eyes and made his skin crawl like pinprick static, the blood flew like a startled flock of deep crimson birds, limbs severed, galvanized armor fell apart at the seams and eco swirled, crackled, hissing in delight.

Purple black and scarlet red arced and coiled in the arena before him like hasty yet masterful and strangely beautiful brushstrokes.

The creatures breath was like that of a man in the dead of winter as the misty dampness puffed out sickly warm and moist with each hot happy sigh, each scream of hate pure and vile, each chilling laugh and every bone crushing gleeful blow.

The orange rat had fallen off of its shoulder and was forced to flee and take shelter behind a supply crate atop one of the raised platforms, safe from the lava flow.

Damas could not bring himself to blame him, were he not a man of dignity, he himself would have hidden behind his throne as the screams echoed in his ears.

The red-hot molten rock rose slowly to meet the creature's feet and the lava hissed as darkness seeped into it at the touch.

Damas found himself remembering the gangrenous wounds so often found on the old battlefield warriors and how the infection spread so rapidly, eating away at all living tissue from the inside out with disgusting ease.

Like the bite of a sagren desert metalhead on a child's ankle and the ensuing torturous necrosis and disease, it was as if the angry orange…died at the devils touch.

It took only around three to six minutes at the most and the last of his twenty warriors fell dead and scorched to have its scraps consumed by the reaching lava, the once proud judge reduced to a vulture in seconds.

The creatures blood drenched and scarred form seemed as if to writhe within the haze of the lavas heat waves as it stalked forward, that same insane fanged smile twisted on its grey face, undaunted and unaffected by the molten fire at its feet.

Blood dripped and sizzled into the lava, dark eco curled around the creature as if it were to pleasure them both, eyes a hateful dead reflection of black and a pit of the deepest hell.

Every hot breath puffed out moist poison fog and every movement accompanied by deadly eco, the creature seemed as if to dwarf the risen lava around it.

Damas watched as the creature, not yet done with its fun, lifted high the remains of the freshly dead man's severed head above his own.

The pouring blood gushed from the stump of what was once a living mans head; cut just below the nose, a disturbingly clean cut for a claw; not even the metalheads could hope to accomplish such craftsmanship with blades.

The devil poured the blood from the stump into its mouth, relishing the taste and the rumbling low growls of its pleasure caused the arena itself to tremble at a primordial level.

It eased out its long plump blood saturated tongue with a seductive slowness and savored the sweet red that flowed out so easily onto its curled back lips, pearl white fangs, dribbled down ash dead cheeks and slithered with a sublime lovers soft touch over a wanting tongue.

Damas nearly wretched, the dry heave of bile burning his throat as he contemplated the massacre below him and as salty sweat tickled his face and stung his eyes, unable to look away. The eco hung thick with its death stench in the air making his eyes tear up, the smell alone would turn his stomach as the dark electricity crackled in the air like lightning. The eco seemed as if to invade his body like wanting poison even from his great distance away and he wanted so bad to just scream it all away, the blood, the death, the eco and the hell; to just scream the torment of the devil away.

But you're afraid to, because if you so much as blink you might miss what happens and when next you open your eyes all you might see is the black light orbs of hell itself.

The metallic copper taste of blood filled his own mouth as he fought back heaves, having bitten his own tongue to hold down the sick and shock and he hadn't even realized it until now as lava and its heat sank away.

"This one has been touched, with dark eco my liege…"

For the first time in five months Damas jumped in surprise, catching himself as his hand stretched out for his weapon.

He had completely forgotten that the bird was at his side; he had forgotten the bright red and yellow creature that perched on his arm, he was getting old if he was making such rookie mistakes.

In a matter of seconds the eco began to subside, sinking back into its deathly flesh and its body cracked and creaked as it regressed into a more human shape.

Slowly the dark ash peeled back into a pale almost albino peach and claws sank into broken nails.

With painful screams and stentorian roars the blood soaked devil shortened and thinned and writhed until nothing but a tired old warrior stood in its place, covered in crimson, a god replaced by a man.

/

"Never look backwards, or you'll fall down the stairs." – Rudyard Kipling

/

It had been nearly a year since the last time it had ever been like that.

Yeah… see, normally dark boy isn't THAT bad.

Jak'd just turn and mop everything up oh so nice and neat and quick but I tell you it hasn't been that BAD since…since I first found him back in Haven on that god-awful black steel table, shaking and cold and dieing and cussing.

Sure, it had scared me shitless the first time and it always does but this time it was just wrong!

WAY too much bloodlust if you ask me…anger management PLEASE!

I think I threw up or maybe I was just too scared TO throw up but my throat definitely burns like I had lost my lunch or heaved up my intestines.

Sitting there all "safe" and cozy up against some random ammo crate, I can't see anything…I don't wanna see…

I'm thankful that he threw me; cuz I don't think I coulda held on or sat there on his shoulder with what he just did.

I was sitting behind a crate, cuz if I can help it in the given situation, I'd rather **not** see but I can still _hear _it, I always hear it.

But I'd never heard it **laugh **before and- shit man I really wish I never had, tall dark and gruesome is gonna be a feature in a lot more nightmares to come and that laugh'll be star player for sure.

Normally Jak'd have SOME sense of himself… and he, he would be gentle, yeah, he'd help to keep me up on his shoulder, take'n it slow for me while he takes care of business.

Normally I can get somewhat close to him.

Normally I can feel his muscle move under me like steel hawsers and I'm so close I can smell his breath.

BIG mistake on my part though, I was throw'n up for hours after; it smelled like blood and eco and rotted out flesh…like hot death on a thorny stick.

I've literally sat on his hard-ass shoulders when he fights and, and the eco makes a bare-spot for me to sit on and it avoids me too, it never touches me, cuz Jak's still in there…somewhere…

Walking case of back tension and if you ask me, he could do with a massage to loose it up.

And oddly enough, during the rare times I get to just sit and think about it late at night or on a bad day, to think about how it feels and moves beneath my claws, I always think of his stiff shoulders and how it's so cold.

With the way his breath fogs up the air like a lurker on Snowy Mountain, you'd think he'd be too hot to touch but he's actually really freaking cold.

Like a corpse.

And then I realize I'm the only person alive who can say that for certain, that I'm the only one to get close enough to actually touch him and live.

…That… I don't really know.

Normally Jak keeps things… relatively clean, Jak's no saint that's for damn sure but he knows suffering of the worst kind and normally he isn't that BAD cuz he's got, y'know…pity.

Maybe this time he didn't keep his head straight or…or maybe this time he just **couldn't** keep his head straight but as he turns back to the pale tan skinned pretty boy we all know and love, the absolute calm in him tells me different.

Maybe he did keep his head.

And as I watched him, covered top to bottom in blood and guts and metal and…and whatever…I follow him.

Now THAT'S devotion I gotta tell ya, if not I don't know what is cuz this is just sick this time!

It's kinda sad too, cuz well… I'm used to it now.

I'm fucking USED to it!

My childhood, bug collecting, butterfly chasing do-gooder best bud that I used to get into trouble with on a sandy shore and a warm day is a cold blooded killer, a psychotic **murderer**, and I'm USED to it!

So I follow him, straight to the rising platform, past the smoldering bits, the smell of burnt tissue and metal melted on the spot is threatening to make me heave again and I walk right up to him.

I'm hanging onto his shoulders with my blunt little claws by the time this lovely little gem finally hits me.

He's still got the poor bastards crushed head in his hands.

He's **still** hold'n onto the fucking HEAD!

Now I definitely know I was sick, cuz I just couldn't get onto his shoulder; my head hurt my vision swung and he was just too damn…SLIPPERY and I couldn't hold on.

So I fell again, right off his shoulder and despite myself all I could think right there, belly up and smeared with so much blood just from **touching** him…was damn, now we're gonna get thrown outta here too!

My tail was a blood wet brush smearing little wiry moist squiggles on the hot metal ground of the arena and my hands were covered, I'd be wringing this shit out of my pretty babe magnet tresses for weeks.

Finally,_ finally_ Jak seems to realize that he's got some poor shits crushed skull in his hands and he just drops it right there.

It hits the floor with a disgusting meaty slurp and Jak just doesn't seem to care right now, cuz he's just looking right on ahead, grey glazed eyes tacked on Damas and he just doesn't care.

He doesn't always turn on purpose, sometimes he just can't help it and, and it's been months since the last time he let the eco go so it's been building up.

So yeah…he couldn't help it, he didn't mean for this to happen and those PEOPLE weren't supposed to die like THAT and…and maybe if I keep screaming that to myself…it'll be true…

We're defiantly getting thrown outta here…

/

"I have multiple personalities and none of them like you…" -unknown

/

"Ah…so he is dangerous"

I hear his rusty speak clear as a bell even down in the arena, the dozens of horrified wide eyes of those around me in the audience burning holes into my body as I remember the Haven city council.

Dangerous, yes I am dangerous, just as I was made to be… just as you made me to be.

For years I've lived by that label and for years to come I will continue to live by it, it's all I really know how to do anymore, it's all I have left in me.

So says my number, 275, tattooed onto the back of my neck by callous and deft hands.

So says my two years in a black-iron prison cell on a lab table, tortured, beaten and abused and experimented on.

So says everything that was taken from me… my home, my life, my freedom and my will and soon what little is left of my more human mind.

What will you think of me now?

What will you see?

Will you blind yourself? Will you turn away from me? Will you hide? Will you be a _coward?_

I am the human cradle that you so lovingly and specially crafted to carry the dark eco, the Akashic of all darkness, that which you so willingly gave my flesh too; be it what black is to come, what has not come, what is and what is not and what will never be.

I am that which lurks in corners and the pitch darkness that swallows the light, the fear and the pain and the hell, for I am the moonlight cold carried away by the sun, so says the black.

What will you do?

/

"Ignorance is having to squish the same spider 3 times before realizing that something is wrong." -unknown

/

"We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." -unknown

/

"…And that could be useful…"

I watch him, study him, I look into its grey eyes and I see the evidence that there was once a much brighter blue hidden there in those sad, deep ash blue orbs.

I brought this thing into my arena, into my city; I sat and watched as it masqueraded in a human skin, as it discarded its mask and slaughtered my men and devoured their flesh and erased their entire existence in a matter of minutes.

This creature was made into a weapon, its eyes tell me so; I can still see the traces of a human in them.

I will wield this weapon.

Before my eyes the man falls to his knees, he seems as if in shock.

This doesn't really surprise me, most likely the fools of Haven city are the idiots responsible for this monstrosity; I had heard of Praxis and his dealings in dark eco and I had heard of his subsequent death by its hands and I had heard of the demon that slaughtered the metalhead leader with an ease once thought impossible.

I had thought those tales exaggerated, though I have complete faith in my spy and in my men that he would do no such thing.

I was right in believing in my spy and this man before me is no doubt the poor bastard child of Praxis's choice that now bares the burden of my dead adversaries legacy of pain.

Havens people were saved by their own most grievous of sins and now they have shunned it for what they had created it to be and they have discarded it and in such action they have given it to me.

Such stupid people and such pointless pain, but perhaps they were right to cast him out, a peacemaker with bent wires can make one hell of a powerful blast but it is also five times more likely to explode and kill you.

He sits bent on his knees, unable to truly comprehend the fact that I have allowed him to stay for now, that he has not been rejected.

I can see it in his body, in the tensing of thick muscle and bloody hands and knees as his scarlet sash flits in small hot updrafts and falls at his side, as the scars shine through and long suffering becomes blatantly obvious.

I see the numbers needled into the back of his neck and the many misshapen scars and bumps and discolored lines that speak of torture and of hells that I have never witnessed and I thank whatever god that there may be that I have not seen such hell.

I can see it in his eyes, which seem to become steadily more human by the second and in the way he stares at his calloused and blood soaked hands.

His lips curl back slowly in a decadent pointy ivory toothed smile, an actual somewhat sane smile, the blood congealing on his features gobs and cracks in sick russet red tear-lines, blotches and pools.

I can tell that the human side has not had reason to smile in far too many years, the unused expression seems to wrinkle his face uncleanly and distorts it into a nightmare of blood and scars and teeth. The sanity in that smile seems unstable yet still it is a more proper sentiency; so much unlike the demon yet so much the same, that exact echo of twisted humanity still resonates between them.

He seems as if to bow forward to me, be it in respect or weariness I may never know.

I watch as clotting ebony and crimson slither and pool, wet red dyed locks flop forward a drenched dirty russet and blond curtain blotting out his polluted ocean blue eyes with black snarling shadows twisting over his gnarled face, the eco crackling beneath seemingly paper thin pale flesh like a curled and eager serpent.

He looks old; he looks like hell…he's too young too look like that…

Yet I cannot bring myself to pity it.

I cannot pity the low purring of wet and eager glee, nor the cracked unnatural blood caked true-smile so unused by this creature that the gesture seems foreign.

I know that this creature has the ability to feel, unlike its other half's pseudo-smile and if this creature still feels then it is still human.

I have seen what havoc that dark eco can play with men and so I cannot pity him because he has withstood this most impenetrable blackness, he has looked into hell and become it and yet he has survived more or less intact.

I cannot pity such strength and such strength does not deserve the pain and degradation of pity.

"What will you have me do…lord?"

Even in death I will never forget that mans smile.

/

For I am the moonlight cold carried away by the sun, so said the darkness.

For I am the sunlight warmth carried away by the moon, so said the light.


End file.
